


Carry Me Home

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Casual Sex, Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the one where Blaine can't do casual sex, and Kurt kind of can. (Blaine tries to be the better man and lets Kurt go. It doesn't work out well for either of them.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This arose from a headcanon meta conversation with a friend of mine, and started mostly with the idea that Blaine's tendency to fall too hard and too fast would ruin him without someone to hold his emotions in check, and Kurt's body armour would be nigh on impossible to penetrate unless he makes a conscious decision to let someone in. This is what happened when I finally decided to write it with more than 50 words.
> 
> Also, I'm aware that the POV shifts randomly from Blaine to Burt in the first part. I tried changing it back to Blaine, but it worked better the way it is. Blaine needs an exterior POV, I think, because otherwise the kid is a mess of self-loathing.
> 
> Anyway!

What Blaine could have used, in retrospect, was an adult sitting down with him and telling him in no uncertain terms that he mattered as well, that sex would change him irreversibly, and that that level of intimacy with another man would leave parts of him missing if he didn't protect himself. Blaine never had that talk.  
  
  
  
Blaine and Kurt separated during Blaine's senior year. It had been Blaine who initiated it, arguing via Skype (and then face to face during Christmas because his timing is nothing if not flawless) that he was holding Kurt back. Kurt was in New York now, living the life and the dream and Blaine - Blaine was still hopelessly stuck in Lima, tiny provincial backwards Lima, and he couldn't be everything Kurt needed, not anymore. He'd been sobbing as he said it, but by January he'd glued himself back together, a really terrible facsimile of himself, and was moving on, even though his heart was still stuck in limbo, hovering somewhere between broken and crushed.   
  
And then Sebastian reappeared.  
  
Blaine hadn't meant for anything to happen with Sebastian, he really hadn't. But Sebastian was as pushy and predatory as ever, and Blaine felt weakened, lonely, and a little bit flattered that Sebastian really thought he was worth this much trouble. He'd played it cool, or at least he thought he'd played it cool, until Sebastian found out that he was now single and therefore fair game, and after that Blaine really hadn't stood a chance. Not that he’d really tried that hard, flicking glances at Sebastian over coffee, peaking at him from beneath his lashes when he pretended to play the bashful schoolboy that seemed to turn him on so quickly.  
  
Also, he'd wanted to prove to Sebastian that he wasn't the prissy uptight virgin everyone thought he was.  
  
He had no idea what he expected. Or, rather, he did, in a way. He'd expected it to be like with Kurt, that they would take their time, map and explore and enjoy one another, but that hadn't been Sebastian's style. Sebastian wouldn't even meet his eyes after, and Blaine had curled himself into a ball, tried to pretend the phantom ache was Kurt and that he didn't feel cheap, then told his mom he was too sick for dinner, showered the smell of Sebastian from his skin, and had avoided all of his friends at Dalton for the remainder of the academic year. He knew they'd know, knew Sebastian would have gloated and peacocked his success, and Blaine had learned rapidly as he spiralled into a pit of self-loathing that he couldn't make the pain of Kurt being gone disappear that easily. (He ran into Nick at the Dairy Queen at the end of June, and Nick grinned and gripped his shoulder tightly, said Sebastian had a serious case of the clap, and Blaine wanted to laugh with him except how he felt sick to his stomach at the thought of that being inside of him. It was good to see Nick though, and he said  as much before they hugged and parted.)  
  
Despite New York being too much too close too everything to Kurt, Blaine started the fall semester of college at NYU before realising he couldn’t do it. It's not that he even came close to seeing Kurt, but knowing he was in the same city even was colossally overwhelming, and so he called his mom, said he couldn’t (just that, “Mom, I can’t,” amidst a flood of tears and it was like she understood him completely despite his incoherency) and then broke down, sobbing, until she said it was okay, really, and he could come back, try the theatre programme as Ohio State where he'd also been accepted. After 18 years of needing to get out of Ohio, suddenly he wanted nothing so much as he wanted to go back.  
  
  
  
On the up side of a performing arts programme, there are a lot of boys like him. Blaine blew through his class quickly, however; none of them quite what he was actually searching for. Instead, Blaine finds himself embedded in Columbus' gay scene, a regular fixture on a Friday or Saturday night, sometimes even on both, depending on how deep the craving goes to just feel connected to someone, even if it's only for a few hours. As the weeks roll past, he finds himself with a definite type - pale boys with long limbs, perfect thighs encased in denim so tight it’s a second skin - and he knows what he's doing but he doesn't care to stop, loses himself in another pair of eyes he can convince himself are glasz if he doesn't think too hard about it. It’s not even close to what he needs, but Blaine doesn’t care, or tries to make himself believe that he doesn’t care. He keeps his private life adamantly off of his Facebook account because the last thing he needs is for any one of his friends (Santana, God, Santana) to find out that he’s a living breathing stereotype who’ll be lucky to not have VD by the time he’s 20 at the rate he’s going, and he’s absolutely clear on the subject of protection (mandatory raincoat, no discussion, even if he’s using his mouth because - because he can’t make guarantees about himself at this point and he’s not willing to risk it; condoms are utterly completely without question a must have). And he always gets their names, even if the name he gets isn’t their real one, because he feels less cheap if he can say he went home with Tyler (Jackson, Benjamin, Adam (twice, consecutively), Kelvin, Stacey (who’d made him beg and sob and scream and ache for days which hadn’t happened since Kurt and that made him sob in an entirely different way), Evan - the list is bordering on endless).   
  
  
  
The summer after his junior year, Blaine returns to Lima, holes himself up in his old bedroom at his parents’ house and tries not to think about everything he’s missing. Occasionally, when the ache threatens to overwhelm him completely, he heads into Westerville and throws himself at the first man to smile at him, or to offer to buy him a drink. This close to home, he won’t risk staying out all night (he still can’t face the look on his parents’ faces, can’t bear disappointing them, and he knows how they felt about Kurt and Christ fuck he misses Kurt so much and he shouldn’t still be this attached, not when he made a conscious call to let Kurt go) and so he makes a lot of hasty exits, gathering his jacket and his shoes somewhere in the small hours of the morning, heads back to his car and pulls up in his parents’ drive just before dawn, crashes on his bed just in time to hear his mom’s careful footsteps outside of his door and her voice ask him if he wants coffee. Without fail, he mumbles a yes into his pillow and hopes it sounds enough like he’s just woken up. She doesn’t question him, and Blaine’s grateful enough that he doesn’t question it either. Every single time, a small piece of himself breaks away, floats into nothing. He can feel himself becoming a shell that looks like Blaine Anderson, and, when he meets up with Wes over lunch in Columbus one afternoon, his friend’s gaze is both tender and knowing. Blaine doesn’t say anything, but he suspects Wes is aware. Blaine thinks perhaps that’s why he always liked him, though; Wes is equally unobtrusive. He gives Blaine a card as he’s leaving though, a number scribbled hastily on the back, “Just in case, Blaine. They’ll always listen.” He looks the number up on the internet when he gets home. It’s the first he’s heard of The Trevor Project and he wants to be instantly dismissive. He doesn’t need that kind of help. He slides the card into his wallet anyway.   
  
  
  
He doesn’t know why he insists on torturing himself (undiagnosed masochism, he hazards, or not even really undiagnosed; he’s been getting off on being hurt for the last two years and this is only a continuation) but he asks Burt Hummell if there’s anything he can do around the shop. He put that old classic back together with his old man when he was 14 and he figures the knowledge should come in useful at some point. Burt looks at him carefully for a while, can see everything in Blaine’s face that he thinks he’s got on lockdown, and says sure, he can find something for someone competent and good with their hands. Besides, it’s not as if any of the grease monkeys he has working for him can count past ten and he could use someone able to interface with customers, which he hasn’t had since - and he stops, because he was going to say “since Kurt left for New York,” but it’s not something he thinks Blaine really needs to hear. Blaine smiles slightly and stares at his feet, toes the ground for a moment, and Burt wants to reach out for him, pull the kid into his arms. He’d once considered Blaine family, and then the boy broke his son’s heart and Burt’s still not sure how he’s supposed to have reacted to that. Everything Blaine does, he does with the best of intentions. Hurting Kurt is only a continuation of that, and Burt can see that he’s still hurting himself. The spark that used to be there is missing. The boy who thought it was entirely appropriate to come into the garage and talk to him about Kurt and sex and a lot of things Burt hadn’t really wanted to consider that his own little boy might be thinking about isn’t there anymore. This kid - and he is a kid, for all he’s filled out since the last time Burt saw him - is almost dead behind his eyes.   
  
Blaine almost conspicuously doesn’t ask Burt about Kurt and New York. He mentions a couple of boys he’s “dated” when Burt asks him how he’s been, but the blush on his cheeks tells Burt everything he needs to know about the kind of dating Blaine does. He’d warned Kurt about it, about throwing himself around, about how easy it would be to come by sex when it’s boys, because boys don’t think they have to involve their emotions - and he thinks how Kurt always said Blaine’s never had a lot of control over his emotions. Burt remembers Kurt telling him about the GAP Attack and how Blaine falls fast and hard and holds nothing back, and how that had been one of the many things about him that Kurt had loved before they were even a couple. (Kurt had been drunk and in tears, only a few days after he’d headed back to New York after that Christmas, and everything he missed about Blaine had been spewing out of him in a sticky ugly mess that Burt didn’t know how to deal with and had had to pass to Carole to sort out; first time in their lives that he hadn’t been able to talk to Kurt and not his finest moment as a father.) Blaine busies himself with customers, though, and they seem to like him. It’s not hard to understand why. He’s personable, he’s utterly non-threatening, he’s intelligent and utterly completely oblivious to how attractive he actually is.   
  
Burt knows without having to ask that Blaine’s been eaten alive out there, without someone to hold him together and protect him. A few years back, he’d have told Blaine the same thing he once told Kurt, that he should take care of himself as well, protect his own heart, because he matters. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. The two of them had felt like forever was built into their DNA, the way they looked at one another, the way Blaine made Kurt laugh, the way Blaine looked at Kurt like he was the moon and stars...  
  
It’s only when Blaine shows up with bruises around his throat one morning that Burt decides enough is enough. Blaine’s voice is rough when he speaks, and the way he holds himself suggests the bruises go further than just his throat. Burt doesn’t know how this conversation is supposed to start but Blaine breaks the silence in the end, says he’s sorry. He’s so fucking sorry, for everything, for Kurt, for the last couple of years, says he doesn’t even know what happened except that he’d panicked and then he’d slept with Sebastian (the way he grimaces and looks everywhere but at Burt suggests there wasn’t much time for sleeping and - and he remembers Kurt mentioning a Sebastian who’d almost blinded Blaine when he was 16, so bad decisions are obviously part of Blaine’s make up), the messiest rebound of his life to date, and he - he - just... the longer it went on, the harder it got to admit he’d been young and rash and stupid, and he’s sobbing, deep body wracking heaves that make him wince and hold his ribs, and Burt’s got his arms around him, rubbing his back as Blaine’s hands ball in his coveralls, clinging to him like he’s drowning. Burt’s not sure, but he thinks perhaps the kid actually is.  
  
When Blaine pulls away from him, swiping roughly at his eyes and fixing his smile back in place, Burt says that kids never change, they’re always young and rash and impulsive, and New York only 4 hours away by plane if he wants to see Kurt again. Blaine laughs softly and looks to see if Burt is joking. “Two hundred bucks, kiddo,” he says, and then, “Call it a loan if you hurt Kurt again.”  
  
  
  
Which is how Blaine finds himself standing in the street outside of a fleabag apartment block in the Bronx, clutching a slip of paper in one hand and his overnight bag in the other. He hadn’t had time to pack much. Just his phone, a change of underwear, a clean shirt. He can feel the phantom ache of Kurt coursing through him, but he can’t make himself call the number Burt had given him either. He’s saved the trouble when Rachel plants herself in front of him, hands on her hips. Figures he probably more than deserves the slap that snaps his head to the left and leaves him rubbing his jaw. She says he looks like hell and he says, ruefully, that he doesn’t feel much better. He’s not expecting sympathy, and that’s just as well because she’s not his friend right now. She’s Kurt’s friend. At least Kurt had one.   
  
“Is he-?”  
  
“No. But come in.”  
  
Blaine shakes his head slowly and says he’ll come back, and it’s like she knows him and knows he won’t, because she narrows her eyes and grabs his hand, physically pulls him into the building. She says he might as well put his bag in Kurt’s room because Kurt is lost in love and that won’t have changed. And then she really looks at him. He thinks maybe she can see everything on him, every random hook up, every dick he’s had on his tongue, everything that’s been pushed into his body and left him begging and breaking and emptier than ever, so he presses his lips into a thin line and shifts where he stands, and then she wraps her arms around him tightly, in the same way as Kurt’s dad had, and says much the same thing. “Did no one ever tell you you’re allowed to feel important, too?” And he pulls away from her, forces a tight little smile and says yeah, one person did. Once.  
  
Rachel makes herself conspicuous by her absence just before Kurt gets home. Blaine curls up on the sofa and tries to sleep, must actually manage it, because when he wakes up, his head is pillowed in Kurt’s lap and it’s like the last two years didn’t happen. He’s not stupid enough to believe he doesn’t have to tell Kurt he’s sorry, that he’s stupid, that he doesn’t have to mention Sebastian or any of the others, but with Kurt’s fingers carding through his hair, he can pretend for at least the next few minutes that everything will be okay.  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Kurt spends the 6 days between Christmas and New Year alternating between sobbing and sleeping, and at one point is vaguely aware of his dad and Carole standing beside his bed staring at him and wondering aloud whether this is normal behaviour for an 18 year old. Kurt buries his face in his pillow, hiccups another sob, and whispers for his dad to not worry. He’ll be back in New York soon and - and he’ll be okay, there’s life after Blaine Anderson.   
  
Except there isn’t.   
  
Kurt returns to New York and the apartment and the job in early January. Rachel deletes Blaine’s contact details from Skype for him and he smiles wanly, forces himself to eat vegan soup because he can’t bring himself to cook. Or care. Even Rachel’s constant self-absorption can’t penetrate his and he finds himself with tears streaming down his face as he calls his dad to tell him all about Blaine, goes through a box of tissues and a whole tub of cookie dough ice-cream and he’s never felt like such a damn girl as he does sat on his sofa watching Project Runway reruns and telling his dad how he fell in love with how open Blaine’s emotions were and how big his heart is and God Christ fuck he can’t, he can’t move on because Blaine - and then his dad hands him to Carole, and Carole’s voice is calming, soothing, and she says the things he needs to hear (they were together for two years, they shared all of their firsts with one another, including their first big love, and this is normal, natural, but this too shall pass, and Kurt snorts, says trite platitudes won’t help except how it kind of does, when he hangs up and thinks about it for a while).    
  
After that conversation comes the part where Kurt moves on with his life. It’s New York. He had big plans for New York a year ago, and he’s damned if he’s going to let Blaine ruin them with his terrible timing. So Kurt pulls himself together, digs out his favourite winter coats from his closet, and decides he’ll try each of the local coffee shops within walking distance until he finds one he really likes. The one he settles on doesn’t necessarily serve the best coffee, but they have PFLAG sticker in the window and the barista smiles at him whenever he walks in and, once, complimented him on his scarf. They virtually have his coffee waiting for him before he gets there before he realises that at some point he’s moved from non-fat mocha to plain drip with cinnamon and spends a month not drinking coffee at all.    
  
Then there’s the collection of accessories that fill two drawers in his dresser before Rachel asks what he plans to do that many brooches, and really, didn’t he get the truly awful accessories out of his system already? Kurt turns one over in his hands and says that he thinks Blaine would like them and swallows the lump as quickly as it forms. Rachel grips his arm, her smile slipping slightly, and says she thought he was doing better. He was, he thinks, he is. He sends a silver lovers knot to his dad with a note (‘For Blaine, Happy Christmas’, to which he seriously debates adding ‘you ass’ because he’s in New York now and it seems somehow appropriate but he doesn’t, figures it’ll be enough) and isn’t really surprised when his dad rings him and says he’s not passing it on, not when Kurt’s still this angry. Kurt laughs and then cries and Burt talks him down again and it feels like a ridiculous thing to be in February already and still not really coping at all.    
  
After he clears out all the reminders of Blaine (including half of his bow ties and every pair of suspenders that he owns, and his Dalton tie that he still has and doesn’t (absolutely does but isn’t thinking about that either) know why he still has), Kurt decides he needs hobbies that keep him out of the apartment for longer periods of time.   
  
He takes up jogging initially. He’s an obscenely chirpy morning person, according to Rachel, so he tries jogging to burn off some of his morning energy. He understands that, hypothetically and technically, there’s absolutely no difference between jogging and running but by mid-March he’s not jogging anymore. He’s pounding the sidewalk so hard that he burns through one pair of running shoes and has to find a way of justifying a new pair out his and Rachel’s meagre joint budget. The running definitely helps, though. It takes his mind off of Blaine entirely (he can’t think about much when every single breath is only driving him forward). Rachel says she’s beginning to learn how bad of a day it is for him based on how long he is out and how flushed his skin is when he collapses back on their couch and kicks his sneakers across the room. He gives her one of his looks and she says nothing, only slips back into her own room to get ready for classes.   
  
He takes up yoga as well. He says he needs something to calm and stabilise him. He’s tried basic breathing exercises before, sitting cross legged on his bed, and has had a certain degree of success, depending on how one chooses to define the word. He’d managed to calm himself down from another hyperventilation inducing  attack of rage and sobbing, but he knows he should be able to do more. Yoga is harder than he imagined it would be, but the pain is therapeutic and Kurt has never quit anything in his damn life so he’s not starting with this. As the weeks roll past, he realises he’s gone from once to twice a week, and then adds a Saturday morning masterclass as well. He’s nowhere near ready for a masterclass but his teacher is calm and easy to follow, and Kurt takes a lot away with him (including what he secretly suspects will come to be a very useful ability to damn near bend himself in half, not that he shares the thought with anyone; since Blaine, there’s no one to share the thought with anyway).    
  
The last thing Kurt does, in early March, is offer himself as an LGBT peer counsellor at NYU. No, he says, he’s not a student, but he’s definitely gay and he can definitely help. That’s where he meets Daniel.   
  
Daniel is 21, half Korean, and he likes Kurt. Or at least, he asks Kurt to have dinner with him and he’s cute enough that Kurt doesn’t say no. They have dinner three times before Kurt agrees to go home with Daniel, and their first time is all fingers and tongues and the heavy smell of sex because there’s no time to discuss anything and theirs isn’t a situation they can just fall into (Kurt is still working through far too many issues, sexually, to just let anyone in). The second time sees Kurt’s fingers disappearing into Daniel’s body until Daniel is a writhing beautiful mess beneath him. Kurt can’t help but remember what Blaine was like, though, and Daniel isn’t the same. He talks more and less, says a lot of things and nothing at the same time, and all Kurt can hear is how Blaine used to virtually sob his name as he came -    
  
He gets Daniel off and makes his excuses, tugs his jeans back over his hips and kisses Daniel softly. They both know it’s goodbye. Kurt doesn’t even have to tell Rachel what happened, she just seems to know, sits beside him on the cracked linoleum of their little bathroom and rubs his back as he heaves into the toilet. Eventually she starts talking, says he needs to get past Blaine eventually, and he turns his head to stare at her, blue eyes ice cold, and says he knows that. Christ on a cracker, he knows that. But how? Rachel has ideas.   
  
So they spend a few months trawling bars and clubs together. Kurt is entirely uncomfortable with the idea of picking up men in bars because he is not going to become that person. Rachel rolls her eyes and says he’s not looking for forever here, he’s looking for right now. Just a little something something to soothe the itch, and he arches one finely manicured eyebrow at her and says she’d obviously spent far too much time with Santana during their senior year. “Something something, Rachel, really? That’s where we’re going with this?” She laughs easily and hugs herself to his side. Kurt doesn’t find a random hook up, though. He finds Isaac, who is playing an open mic that Rachel drags him to. Isaac’s hair is brown and longish and curls across his forehead, and he plays acoustic guitar with a casual assurance that tugs low in Kurt’s gut, and Kurt’s absolutely sure without asking him that they’re on the same team so he offers to buy him a drink when his set finishes. Isaac pushes his hair from his eyes (green, not hazel or amber or green-brown depending on the light) and agrees with a small smile, and Kurt - Kurt wants him enough to push Blaine from his mind for a moment, to categorically ignore what even the blindest observer can see he’s doing.   
  
Isaac lasts into June, and what follows him are a string of men and boys who look enough like Blaine for Kurt to lose himself in their bodies for a few weeks at a time. By the time Christmas (the first without Blaine, which puts a lump in his throat and forces him to dig out the gum wrapper ring he has hidden in his scarf collection so he can stare at it for a while), there have been enough Isaacs for Kurt to have hardened himself to what is happening. Rachel, trying to be her usual helpful self, says she can see what Kurt is doing, and Kurt laughs. He can see what he’s doing as well, and he doesn’t need Rachel’s helpful input thank you. “You’re trying to find a substitute,” Rachel presses and Kurt slams his wine glass down hard enough on the countertop that the stem breaks and wine sloshes red across the surface. He’s so angry that he doesn’t even try to save his jeans from the stains.    
  
“How about focussing on your own love life, Rachel?” he says, eyes a whirling mass of emotion that he can’t keep in. “At least I didn’t try to marry the boy I broke up with three time before the end of senior year.”   
  
Which is true. The boy he’d planned to marry had been his friend, his lover, his confidant, his fucking first, and God, Blaine - beautiful harmless oblivious Blaine, who did everything for the right reasons, because he was trying to be the bigger person, because he was always trying so fucking hard to please everyone even if it meant crippling himself...    
  
Rachel slaps his face, however, and calls him a string of words he didn’t even think she knew. “You’re not even a nice person without him,” she finishes and he has no response except to grab his phone and his coat and slam the door behind himself.    
  
Kurt comes back later with vodka and vegan chocolate and tries to let himself in to apologise, but Rachel has locked the door and isn’t answering the phone, so he’d reduced to apologising through the flimsy plywood. He’d be embarrassed but he’s beyond it now, only stares down their neighbour across the landing when she cracks open her door and gives him a pitying look. It’s a look she gives him a lot, and he knows it’s because she’s judging how he looks. So much for New York, he thinks bitterly, because sometimes it’s hard to remember how that look is so much rarer here, and how no one, really, thinks anything of him kissing any one of his boyfriends goodbye in public. (He equally doesn’t think much about how he kisses people goodbye a lot. He’s never kissing his boyfriends hello, like he had with Blaine towards the end.)    
  
It’s only when he’s run out of ways to apologise again that Rachel cracks the door open behind him, and he scrambles to his feet. She’s wearing old sweats and a t-shirt that is massively too big on her and falls off of one shoulder. “Chocolate?” she says, and he nods, handing her the box. “Guess you can come in then.” It’s begrudging, and he’s not sure what to make of it because it’s his apartment as well, but there it is. They drink entirely too much vodka, and reminisce about McKinley and Finn and Blaine, and they’re both drunk and sobbing by the time they call it a night, but it’s a little bit cathartic as well.    
  
Kurt meets Adam in early January. He’s not in a good place, emotionally, but Adam is cute and 25 (and Filipino, which Kurt tells Rachel to not even mention to him because he doesn’t want to hear it) and he’ll happily sit with Kurt and talk to him for hours, which is familiar and comfortable in a way that Kurt hadn’t fully owned he was missing. Because talking to Rachel is fine, but she’s female and straight and her life experiences aren’t his. Adam gets it though, almost more so, because he’s an only child, he’s gay and he’s Asian, and in his life those have not been a comfortable set of circumstances, and, whilst he’s not as eager to please or as malleable as Blaine had been, he still moulds himself into what Kurt needs him to be and that’s good enough that, for a short while (while it lasts), Kurt finds himself keeping spare clothes and a toothbrush at his place, and they exchange gifts for Valentine’s (nothing flashy but Adam knows him well enough that he gets him another silk scarf and Kurt is floored and winds up sobbing into another tub of ice cream as Rachel and Carole both tell him it’ll pass and he’s so fucking ready for it to pass now, he really is, which is when Rachel says, again, that maybe if his boyfriend wasn’t an amber eyed Filipino it would pass faster, which has Kurt putting down the ice cream and slamming the front door hard enough that he cracks the frame, for which he later apologises and pays to fix) and Kurt buys Adam trinkets just because he can. He’s not lost in love, or even really in lust, but it’s stable and it makes him feel good and that’s all that really matters.    
  
(Adam leaves him, in the end, when Kurt can’t quite bring himself to say “I love you” back to him. He tries to, but the words aren’t really there, and he goes with “I really like you.” They both know what that means, and Kurt’s hurt but he’s not devastated. Adam watches him with sad puppy dog eyes as he packs his clothes into a bag, and those eyes are, he realises, exactly what he likes about Adam, because that expression is identical to Blaine’s and that punches him in the gut and leaves him reeling for days.)   
  
This is how Kurt sees his life going. Random men and two month relationships that he doesn’t exactly throw himself into. Not casual enough to really be “casual sex” in the way his dad had meant it when he was 16, but not exactly rock steady committed relationship sex either. He doesn’t feel himself falling apart the way his dad said he would, though. Kurt’s got his emotions on a strict lock down. Not even the men he sleeps with really see his heart. There’s not enough time when the longest he sees any of them for is nine weeks, and sometimes they’re lucky to make it through two. Rachel says - and he’s sick of Rachel “just saying” anything at this point but he listens all the same - that sex is making him cold, hard. He gazes at her implacably for a while and then nods and resumes chopping vegetables for pad Thai. Really, there’s nothing he can say when he knows she’s actually right.    
  
And then, the end of the summer that will make it almost three years since Blaine walked out of his life and just he is finally thinking that maybe he is learning to adjust, Rachel calls him at work. “Blaine is standing outside,” she says, and Kurt says she’ll need to repeat that because the line is horrible, what the fuck does she mean Blaine is standing outside of where? “Of the apartment,” Rachel says quietly, just staring at the tiny, hunched figure in the street, bag over one shoulder and phone in his hand, staring up and down the street and finally at the front door. “I’d forgotten how little he is,” she says. Kurt swears and says he’ll be home and to get Blaine off of the damn street before someone picks him up, because Blaine would probably just get in the car and not even fucking question it, and Rachel coos at him and says he’s still in love, isn’t he, and it’s either cute or vomit inducing and she’ll let him know which later...   
  
Which is how Kurt comes home to find the apartment empty, save for a bruised Blaine lying on his sofa, arms wrapped around himself and shivering in his sleep. His cheek is red and angry and Kurt knows that’s probably Rachel, who had threatened to slap some sense into him years back, when it had all first happened, but Kurt can’t find it in himself to be angry anymore. Blaine is just - it’s Blaine, and he’s so small and even asleep he looks more damaged than he ever has, and Kurt’s lost in love in a way he can fully own when the boy is lying there like that. He’s careful not to wake him as he slides onto the couch, settles Blaine’s head in his lap and cards gentle fingers through Blaine’s hair until he stirs and cracks his eyes open and Kurt’s heart lurches because those eyes are exactly as he remembers them when he gets himself off. “Hey you,” he whispers, warmer than he should be for everything Blaine put him through, and Blaine’s smile is fragile but there and his fingers feel enticingly familiar as they grip Kurt’s thigh. “Hey,” he breathes, and this, Kurt decides, this is home and he’s never letting it go again.   
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

There’s a part of Blaine that doesn’t want Kurt to forgive him so easily. It’s the part of him that hurls itself bodily from Kurt’s lap as consciousness settles over him, the part of him that won’t let Kurt touch him, the part of him that says without any grace or eloquence that he’s sorry, he shouldn’t have come, and he’s leaving, he’s leaving now, that makes a move for Kurt’s room and his bag and misses by a mile because Kurt is in his way and has his hands on Blaine’s shoulders, forcing him to stillness and smiling sadly as tears pool unbidden in Blaine’s eyes. “Blaine,” he says quietly, stroking his face, running the pads of his thumbs across Blaine’s cheek bones. “Baby, stop it. I love you.” And that’s all it takes, the tears falling as Blaine crumples against him, Kurt’s arms the only things keeping him upright as he clings to him, Kurt’s lips gentle against his own before he helps them both to the floor.    
  
“Don’t,” Blaine manages to whisper, turning his face away from Kurt’s. “Don’t love me.”   
  
As if it’s ever been that easy.   
  
  
  
Their first time, after, is tentative and breathless and Blaine feels connected in a way he hasn’t in entirely too long. Quietly, he’s always known that no one else could hold him together the way Kurt does and he wants to tell Kurt he’s sorry, that he’s tried to not be this needy and this desperate, but Kurt lips feels like absolution against his skin and he’s sobbing, clinging to Kurt, both of their hands bruisingly insistent against one another’s skin. Blaine whispers his desire into Kurt’s throat instead, more capable of asking for this when they’re naked and conjoined, kisses the sweat from his skin, and whimpers as he comes, clings to him as he feels Kurt pulling away, pleading with his eyes for Kurt to not leave him because there’s been a lot of leaving and he can’t cope with Kurt doing this to him as well. Kurt only leans back down and kisses the curls back from his forehead, across his eyebrows and down his nose, mapping his whole face with his lips as if he’s forgotten how it feels to worship Blaine this way, and says he’s not leaving, it’s his apartment and his bed, but they can’t sleep like this. Blaine’s slept in worse states, and he can’t quite believe he’s forgotten this about Kurt, but he flicks on a sleepy smile and grips Kurt’s wrist, presses his lips to Kurt’s hand. “I love you,” he says quietly, and lets Kurt go.   
  
  
  
Kurt buys Blaine a ring for his 21st birthday, takes some of his vacation days and flies back to Ohio for the occasion, makes a lot of promises and talks too much and finishes with a simple request for Blaine to please say yes and marry him, and then follows up with saying that it would make him the happiest he’s ever been. He tries not to read too much into Blaine’s expression, into Blaine’s too-big eyes and his incredulous smile, and waits for Blaine to form a response beyond breathless nodding. “Blaine, say something,” he whispers, catches his boyfriend’s hands and stares at his face. Blaine’s yes is so soft he has to repeat it three times before Kurt is certain it even exists, but there it is. The boy he said he was going to marry when he was sixteen and absolutely certain he’d lucked out and found The One is finally going to be his for the rest of their adult lives. Kurt is deliriously happy, and the world has never been more perfect.   
  
  
  
It’s after the big move east that they finally have The Conversation. Rachel is back in Ohio with her parents, and they’re spending their time alone reacquainting themselves with one another’s bodies, mapping the changes that growing into men apart has had on them. Flicking his tongue across the new definition of Blaine’s abs and obliques, Kurt says, conversationally, that he’d been seeing a Filipino guy for a little while, and how Rachel had told him he was clearly punishing himself by only sleeping with men who reminded him of Blaine. He feels Blaine freeze underneath him and looks up to see Blaine’s amber eyes cloud with worry before he has a chance to lock his emotions away again, and so he moves slowly, straddles Blaine’s hips and rests a hand on his chest, stroking him with gentle fingers. “Hey,” he whispers, “Blaine, don’t. Don’t lock me out. Talk to me.” And Blaine laughs in a way that could be a sob and shakes his head, runs his hands up Kurt’s thighs and rubs his thumbs across his hips absently.   
  
“You don’t want to hear this,” he says eventually, and Kurt’s smile is sad as well but he nods his head and says he does, he needs to know, if they’re going to be together forever he needs to know everything. Full disclosure, the only way they’ve ever really worked, after that time when Blaine was 17 and falling apart inside and unable or unwilling to tell Kurt how much he was already missing him. Blaine is silently thankful for the weight of Kurt’s body pinning him down. He feels anchored, grounded,  safe , and starts with Sebastian and says that did for the rest of his senior year, there was no one else until after he left New York -    
  
“You came?”   
  
“Yeah. I - I left before Christmas. I wanted this as well but I couldn’t. You were here and I couldn’t be.”   
  
Kurt nods as if this makes sense, and Blaine wonders, not for the first time, where he found him, because no one should be this lucky twice.   
  
\- and returned to Columbus, where there were a lot of beautiful men with an eye for fashion and, equally, an eye for bright young things willing to give anything up for a momentary connection in the loneliness. Blaine had ID that said he was 21, a drawer full of t-shirts that stretched sheer across his body, and a background in boxing that had done wonders for his shoulders. He’d always been incredibly submissive to the whims of others, despite the bravado he put on, and his tolerance for alcohol was non-existent. He had just one watertight rule; no condom, no sex. It wasn’t often he went home alone. Honestly, it wasn’t often  he went home.    
  
Kurt listens quietly, his hands gentle against Blaine’s skin, but to Blaine it feels like burning. He closes his eyes and wills himself to be anywhere other than right here, where Kurt is still exploring his body with his fingertips, gentle and insistent and achingly familiar.    
  
“How many, Blaine?” Kurt whispers, and Blaine wishes he sounded judgmental, wishes he sounded disappointed in him, but he doesn’t. He’s prepared himself for Kurt’s disappointment and for the rejection that’s inevitable when he realises that Blaine is a cheap date and an easy lay, that all he’d really required for someone to tie him up and make him beg, and how it had taken less than no time for his desperate need to please to be taken advantage of. But Kurt’s not judging him. He only sounds curious, and perhaps a little sad that Blaine was reduced to randoms to keep him going. Blaine honestly hasn’t kept a scorecard, but there are a lot of weekends in two years and he rarely slept with the same man twice.    
  
“I don’t know,” he whispers, voice cracking, pleading silently with Kurt to let it drop. “Too many. Was trying to find you.”   
  
Kurt doesn’t press him further, only lowers his head to press a kiss to the hollow of Blaine’s throat, rolls off of him and pulls him gently into his side before covering them with a blanket. “You found me,” he says quietly, turning his face to kiss Blaine’s nose.    
  
It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.   
  
  
  
They decide to celebrate their first Thanksgiving together in their own home by inviting their families to come to them, on the strict proviso that everyone bring their own wine and gifts of food and money will not be turned away either. Kurt invites his parents (but asks if it’s okay that Finn not come because Rachel doesn’t cope well with Finn’s name, much less his presence, not since Blaine came back and Finn never has, which Carole says is fine, even though they both know it isn’t), and Rachel’s parents agree to come as well. It only leaves Blaine’s parents to ask. Blaine’s smile is brittle when he says it’s not their best idea ever. Maybe his mom - and Kurt says no, both parents. He’s got two, right? “Unfortunately,” is all Blaine says before grabbing the phone and stalking into the bedroom for privacy.   
  
Forty minutes later, Kurt pushes open the bedroom door to find Blaine curled into a ball on Kurt’s side of their bed. “Hey,” he whispers, sitting behind him and resting a hand on Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine flinches and pulls away, makes a choked sound low in his throat and that’s when the tears start in earnest. Kurt pulls him onto his back with insistent hands, fights against Blaine’s wiry strength the whole time, until Blaine is staring up at him, his whole body trembling, and Kurt doesn’t have any idea what the appropriate response is to him now.   
  
“Mom will come,” Blaine says to the lengthening silence.   
  
“And your dad?”   
  
Blaine chokes on another sob and crawls into Kurt’s lap, wraps his arms around Kurt’s neck and kisses him hungrily, messily, without any skill or finesse. “I love you,” he says. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” For once, Kurt doesn’t push it. At least Blaine is breathing normally again. Later he’ll learn that Blaine’s father has taken this invitation to a turkey dinner as the last straw, and has formally disowned his youngest son. His mom still comes, though, tiny and beautiful and impeccably well mannered as she talks to Burt, and to Leroy Berry, her laugh so like Blaine’s, his smile so like hers, and Carole tells her she has raised a fine boy in Blaine, making Blaine blush because he’s a lot of things but fine hasn’t been one of them recently, but his mom pats his shoulder and says he’s always been a good kid, really, there wasn’t a lot of raising him well to be done, and Burt nods, thinking of how, after his mom died, Kurt had been difficult for a while but still, raising him had been more like offering a rudder to a rudderless ship than the actual hard work he’d imagined it would be when Kurt was six and obviously different. It’s almost midnight before dinner finishes in the end, and Rachel’s dads offer to share a cab with Blaine’s mom as they’re at the same hotel, and Blaine is so proud of his mom for coming, for supporting him, for loving him no matter what. Burt pulls him into a hug before he leaves, rubs his back and nods his affirmation of his and Kurt’s relationship as well. “You did good, kid,” he says, and Blaine feels himself glowing.    
  
  
  
After Thanksgiving, the names and numbers come more easily to both of them. They recall things over breakfast. Blaine will laugh or make a sad moue, depending on the tone of Kurt’s recounting, and Kurt in turn either grins easily or holds Blaine against him, depending on Blaine’s physical reaction to a memory or a name. The last name Blaine comes up with, before the game stops altogether, leaves him leaning over the sink as he brings his pancakes back up, his fingers tangling in his hair as he wills his pulse to return to normal. Kurt doesn’t want to make him think about that time any more than he has to, but he needs to know. “The bruises,” he whispers, pouring water from the fridge into a glass for Blaine. “When you got here, that first time. Were they from him?” Blaine nods and takes a small sip of water, fights against the panic rising in his throat. Kurt nods sadly and pulls him close, loops his arms around Blaine’s neck and Blaine’s settle around his waist, the cool glass chill against his lumbar spine. “I’m sorry, Blaine,” he says quietly into Blaine’s hair, and Blaine buries his face against Kurt’s throat, loses himself in Kurt’s cologne for a moment, before pulling away and rinsing out the glass he’s still holding.   
  
“Don’t be,” he says softly, staring out of the window at their lack of view and loving it unreservedly anyway. “Your dad made me tell Cooper, since he didn’t think my dad would be of much use. It’s in the past.”   
  
Except how they both know it isn’t, and how they both know Blaine used to like mild restraint, and how they both know Blaine really lost something important in that encounter. Kurt doesn’t push him, though.   
  
  
  
Things get easier after that, though. Blaine has less to hide and Kurt worries less about inadvertently triggering him after a midnight phone call to Cooper reassures him that Blaine wasn’t raped or assaulted but managed to get himself in over his head with a man he didn’t fully trust. Kurt doesn’t have to ask what ‘in over his head’ means in this instance, but Blaine’s visceral reaction to the memory of it is enough to make Kurt vow silently to keep anything they do together entirely vanilla until Blaine is completely comfortable around him again. Cooper says he thought Blaine was doing better with this now, though, and Kurt is quick to reassure him that Blaine is fine, he’s okay, and Cooper should consider himself firmly invited to their wedding, whenever it is. Cooper laughs softly and says he wouldn’t miss it for the world, the chance to see his kid brother finally fulfil the potential he’d always had back when he was little. “More little. Even littler.” Kurt smiles to himself as he hangs up the phone, and Blaine curls quietly into his body as Kurt slides into bed beside him.   
  
They get married the spring after Blaine turns 24. Blaine’s mom flies in with Burt and Carole, and Cooper joins them from LA. Rachel and her boyfriend attend, and Blaine is quietly relieved when Wes comes with his wife, and David comes with his daughter. Kurt’s friends come from work, and Blaine asks a few people from his teaching course, and they’re both surprised to see Santana and her girlfriend arrive. They’d both agreed they’d like her to be there, but neither had really expected to see her. “Always knew you two love sick goons would beat us all,” she says, hugging them both in turn.    
  
The ceremony isn’t lavish, but, by the time it is finished, Carole is sobbing quietly into a tissue, and Blaine’s mother’s smile is clearly holding back tears of her own. Santana presents them with matching bracelets and a quiet request to stay in touch this time before making excuses about babysitters (her girlfriend’s son is only 3) and leaving. Wes envelops Blaine in a warm hug, which Blaine returns easily. “Do anything so stupid as try to be the bigger person again,” he warns softly, and Blaine laughs, actually laughs, and says he’s learned that lesson now, and he’s never letting go again.   
  
The afternoon wears into the early evening, and Rachel - against both Kurt’s and Blaine’s better judgement - has been allowed a microphone. She begins with the story everyone knows - how they met, that stupid Katy Perry song and a beautiful Beatles one - and moves quickly through the intervening years, finishing with the two of them, here and now, their special day, and she starts to sing, her voice more trained, more controlled, and the song is all for them. Kurt offers Blaine his hand and Blaine laughs softly as he accepts, wraps his arms around Kurt’s waist again as Kurt’s loop around his neck.   
  
It’s been a long road back to comfortable but, with his face buried against Kurt’s neck and lost in the familiarity of Kurt’s cologne, Blaine feels like perhaps they’ll make it after all.

 

 

  
  


FIN   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is. Yes, I'm an endgamer. I can't help it. Part three needs a final edit, of which I'm also aware. It is, at times, woefully repetitive (a master achievement when there are only 2700 words at play) and in a couple of places the sentence structure is clumsy. Occasionally I do that on purpose, but in this instance it is an actual accident that my poorly brain can't be bothered to deal with. :(


End file.
